Cherish the cheese

It was lunchtime and I was hungry. Hungry people buy whatever edible ingredients they see, not taking any account of the capacity of their stomachs. Therefore, my shopping basket contained: a baguette, a jar of anchovies (a particularly large jar, as I suddenly felt a craving for them), a box of cherry tomatoes, some cheese and an apple. A beautiful day it was, which means the temperature rose above 12 degrees. It wasn’t too hot either, that is: not a grade above 16. Gosh, no, of course, not a 16 and a half, all the canals would have evaporated, and where would I have my picnic then? 

There I sat, on a grass field, enjoying my 40 minutes of freedom, my bottom protected from getting wet by a plastic bag. Always carry a plastic bag with you if you’re in Holland - it comes handy before, during and after the rain. Before - as it gives you the safe feeling “I have a bag with me just in case”. During - you can put it on your head, if your hair is particularly good today, or if you simply refuse to notice that it  rains again (do make sure you leave a little opening for fresh air). After - in case you wanted to have a picnic on the grass. You can also let it dance in the wind, just like in that beautiful scene from “American Beauty” (do pick it up afterwards, not only to protect the environment, but because you’ll need it again any moment soon).

Safe and comfortable with a dry bottom I filled the first fragment of my baguette with anchovies. They tasted great. Incredibly intense. I added a few more, as they were delicious. Three bites further I stopped liking that intensity. Four bites later I thought I might  save them for later. One more bite and they ended up in a paper bag. “Good, it's time for cheese now” I thought. True Dutch cheese, one of the few real delights in the low lands. The first slice came with a surprise - one of the holes in it, the main cheese-hole, was heart-shaped. Of course, you could see it as a plain, irregularly shaped hole, too. Whatever dawns on you.

A baguette with cheese it was, for a change, accompanied by cherry tomatoes, some of them tasting incredibly sweet, some others quite bland, or sour, watery, uninteresting. 
I wondered how that was possible, the tomatoes coming from the same branch, same box,   with such different tastes. But that was the way they were. Not all of them sweet. And if it’s sweet tomatoes you fancy, you could of course add some sugar to them. At least, if you insisted on getting sweet tomatoes in the 40 minutes of your freedom. Even then, the tomatoes themselves wouldn’t have got any sweeter - that would have been the sugar’s job, but you could have fooled your senses. 

It’s all in the thought. It creates reality, just like sugar creates sweet tomatoes. “Thought is the best special effects department” as says Jamie Smart in a very smart book entitled “Clarity”. As I continued reading, some pieces of my baguette got in between the pages. It was then that the clarity and peace of mind, the default settings of every human being, came to the surface.  The shape of the heart in that slice of cheese was telling me everything will be fine. Telling me everything already is fine, in fact, because it all belongs there, in the same basket, on the same branch: sweet and sour tomatoes, delicious anchovies, disgusting after I overdosed, cold air and warm rays of sun, my dry bottom and the wet grass underneath.